Long response, which I've posted before. Mods, if you don't like, feel free to excise.

The evidence suggests that they do like...

The current fashionable attitude amongst the atheist cultural elite which essentially lumps all devoutly religious people together is the problem, not the answer. The psychiatric term "projection" leaps to mind whenever I hear some atheist or agnostic, or even a member of one of the more exsanguinated and emasculated forms of Christianity or Judaism, attempt to draw parallels between fundamentalist Christians and radical Islam. It is the easy thing to do, and tempting, to conflate the Islamists and the religiously zealous of other faiths, but it will always be inaccurate, since there are major and irreconcilable differences apparent to those who attempt observe these faiths rationally and without bigotry towards religion in general and Christianity in particular.

First, at least in Europe and the U.S., the objections to Christian fundamentalists are almost always based on social, economic, and education industry snobbery, rather than mature, logically thought-out philosophical arguments or dispassionate, accurate assessments of facts on the ground. I am as likely as anyone to prefer attractive, witty, wise, composed sophisticates who are cosmopolitan and informed (and the bulk of devoutly Christian people fit into that category) to angry, fat, envious, ignorant, doctrinaire people (and it should be obvious that plenty of atheists that fit that description). Nevertheless, devout Christians (like devout Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc.) are not, despite a few silly forays into educational policy that are basically defensive in nature, and despite a few extremely isolated, statistically insignificant crackpots, a threat to the beliefs or values of anyone outside of their communities, nor to anyone's life or limb. Even their most proselytizing groups are not prone to using widespread organized force to spread or maintain their doctrines, and have not been so to any meaningful extent for centuries.

Second, the essential nature of Islam as a faith is different than that of other religions. The extreme austerity and abstraction of Islam, combined with the arbitrary justifications for otherwise immoral conduct brought about by what is an attempt to duplicate precisely the personality and life of Mohammed, create a contradiction that is unique among religions, and makes for a much more dangerous set of conditions than those produced in any other faith groups including and especially Christianity.

Among world religions, only Islam has such a high percentage of members who are aggressively, outwardly directed in their willingness to expand by the use of violence and oppression -- not as last means, but as a core tactic -- and are dominated by the need to seek out and, as matter not just of practice but of organizing principle, destroy all evidence of nonconformity. In truth, the nature of Islam, with its arbitrary, merciless, and impersonal god, resembles, ironically, a kind of formalized atheism more than anything else. Like atheism it is intolerant, condescending, devoid of humility, and often militant (see atheism in the USSR or Red China or North Korea). Like atheism, Islam is a preening, conceited, self-superior, pseudointellectual 'ethical culture' combined with a set of what are, in practice, unethical moral precepts -- and like atheism, these memes cannot be unbundled.

Much as there has never been or can be a truly free, democratic, and benevolent atheist nation, so too has there never been a truly benevolent Islamist one, and I suspect there never will be. A dispassionate look at the facts reveals that Islam, especially (but not only) radical Islam, is more like atheism than it is, despite its pretensions, like a religion. Most Muslims refuse to deal with this truth. Conversely, atheists demonize Christianity in an attempt to deal with their own inability to honestly resolve any cognitive dissonance created by their own philosophical similarities to Islam. This is the ultimate reason for projection by atheists in their attempts to draw an unfounded confluence between Muslim extremists and Christianity -- instead of seeing the log in their own eye. This is also why trying to draw a link between radical Islam and fundamentalist Christians is not the answer.

#1
The Christian fundamentalism is based entirely on scripture, which foretells events (prophecy), many of which have come to pass as signs of a God that trully exists that is the center of the religion.

There is not one prophecy in Islam that has come to pass, only belief in "Alah" by brute, militant force.

#1
Yes, but if its the Sun, then all those grants and taxes go 'puff' just like the other blood suckers exposed to the cleansing sunlight. Pols and eco-weenies power grabbers will be pining for the fjords.

#3
A few years ago, I read about a climate modelling program that had just been developed; it accurately predicted all the ice ages for the past muillion years or so.... except one. It predicted that we should be in one already. So perhaps all that reduction in greenhouse gasses and carbon has stripped us of the one thing that was holding off the coming ice age.

#6
As I recall back in the Jimmy Carter era (or disaster as many say), global cooling was the big concern. "The sky is falling morons" would have us all do their bidding. These progressives would shut down any progress. Modern day Luddites. A hearty STFU to all of them.

#7
Livingston & Penn have shown that, due to a decrease in the sunspot magnetic field strength, the number of visible sun spots is steadily decreasing. Since magnetic fields cool sunspots, a decreasing field means that sunspots are getting warmer reducing their contrast with their surroundings, which in turn makes the spots harder to see.

If the trend continues, the number of visible sun spots may fall to values not seen since the Maunder Minimum AKA the little ice age.

The Diplomad nails it with regard to how non-Western governments (and a few Western ones like the Russians) view the taking of hostages by terrorists:

The objective of these operations is to kill the hostage-takers, and end the embarrassment and threat they pose to the government. Once the hostages fall into the hands of the crazies, they are written off. The thinking is brutal and simple, "I don't care about the hostages you have. You have no bargaining chip. I am going to kill you."

#5
it is a perfectly accurate description of the attitude most of the world has towards hostages and hostage-takers.

Theyre not hostage-takers. This illustrates the folly of calling them bombers sometimes and gunmen at other times. Hell, a couple of months ago you might just as well called em limb loppers. Their motives are clear. Theyre Islamic Terrorists! Every action against them should start and end with that base line.

In many ways, BP's state-of-the-art gas facility in the middle of Algerian nowhere was a symbol of Western Europe's idyllic isolation from the growing chaos just across the Mediterranean. For the last two years, the West has looked at the region through the rose-tinted lens of the 'Arab Spring'. Democracy was supposed to be transforming the Arab world.

But last Wednesday's assault on the In Amenas gas production facility was a 'surprise' attack which everyone should have been expecting. And while the post-mortems currently underway will attempt to explain why the BP complex was so easily taken, this narrow focus on security is a simplistic view. The broader threat to local governments in the area and to the West in general from the Islamic fundamentalist groups across the vast Sahara region needs to be urgently assessed.

The continuing flow of Libyan oil was one reason why David Cameron and his Nato partners were happy to take credit for their part in Colonel Gaddafi's downfall. But it went almost unnoticed that Algeria greeted the celebratory gunfire of Gaddafi's lynching with a deafening silence. To them, Gaddafi was a useful neighbour because he shared the same enemies -- the Islamist rebels who want to take over the entire region. Unlike Gaddafi, the rulers of Algeria are not a flamboyant lot. They are mainly generals in and out of uniform. They regarded the Arab Spring as a threat to their regime. To them democracy is a bad idea not just because people might vote them out of power, but because it could mean chaos. In 1990, when fundamentalist candidates looked set to win, the generals stepped in to stop the elections. A decade of horribly brutal civil war followed.

This explains why there was such a disconnect between Whitehall and Algiers over how to handle the hostage crisis.

See the comments of the Diplomad (cited today) also in this regard: western governments place the value of the lives of the hostages above the goal of stopping the terrorists. Most governments in the rest of the world reverse that order.

Our Government was bewildered by the Algerian decision to open fire without consulting us or other foreign leaders. But the Algerian army had -- and still has -- three simple reasons for cracking down at once: it wanted to stifle the crisis quickly and to destroy the terrorists; they wanted to show their own people that the regime is still firmly in charge and they were also desperate to avoid any chance of Western special forces getting to play a role on their territory. North African governments may share a common Islamic fundamentalist enemy, but sharing a common enemy doesn't mean they share the same values.

From Afghanistan via Iraq to Libya, the West has shown it can knock down tyrannical Humpty-Dumpties, but putting the societies back together again has eluded us which is why Algeria sees the Arab Spring as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

In some ways it is surprising how few people have been radicalised. But we cannot let ourselves rely on their moderation for ever. Unless ordinary life can be made better Islamic radicals will offer a brutally simple solution to too many people. As the Libyan example shows, exporting democracy at gunpoint is not enough. Without governments genuinely concerned for the well-being of the people in the lands south of the Mediterranean, hopes for a peaceful future for North Africa -- and Europe -- will be no more than a mirage.

One of the main reasons Western citizens cant see the obvious about Islam is that they have been subjected to an educational system that insists on the moral equivalency of all cultures and religions, just as it had previously insisted on the equivalency of all value systems. So, the initial impulse for writing the book was my realization that the same people who introduced moral chaos into schools and society were now bent on normalizing an alien ideology. Or, to paraphrase Mark Steyn, the people who brought you Heather Has Two Mommies are about to bring you Heather has four mommies and a great big bearded daddy.

#3
Long response, which I've posted before. Mods, if you don't like, feel free to excise.

The current fashionable attitude amongst the atheist cultural elite which essentially lumps all devoutly religious people together is the problem, not the answer.

The psychiatric term projection leaps to mind whenever I hear some atheist or agnostic, or even a member of one of the more exsanguinated and emasculated forms of Christianity or Judaism, attempt to draw parallels between fundamentalist Christians and radical Islam. It is the easy thing to do, and tempting, to conflate the Islamists and the religiously zealous of other faiths, but it will always be inaccurate, since there are major and irreconcilable differences apparent to those who attempt observe these faiths rationally and without bigotry towards religion in general and Christianity in particular.

First, at least in Europe and the U.S., the objections to Christian fundamentalists are almost always based on social, economic, and education industry snobbery, rather than mature, logically thought-out philosophical arguments or dispassionate, accurate assessments of facts on the ground.

I am as likely as anyone to prefer attractive, witty, wise, composed sophisticates who are cosmopolitan and informed (and the bulk of devoutly Christian people fit into that category) to angry, fat, envious, ignorant, doctrinaire people (and it should be obvious that plenty of atheists that fit that description). Nevertheless, devout Christians (like devout Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, etc.) are not, despite a few silly forays into educational policy that are basically defensive in nature, and despite a few extremely isolated, statistically insignificant crackpots, a threat to the beliefs or values of anyone outside of their communities, nor to anyones life or limb. Even their most proselytizing groups are not prone to using widespread organized force to spread or maintain their doctrines, and have not been so to any meaningful extent for centuries.

Second, the essential nature of Islam as a faith is different than that of other religions. The extreme austerity and abstraction of Islam, combined with the arbitrary justifications for otherwise immoral conduct brought about by what is an attempt to duplicate precisely the personality and life of Mohammed, create a contradiction that is unique among religions, and makes for a much more dangerous set of conditions than those produced in any other faith groups including and especially Christianity. Among world religions, only Islam has such a high percentage of members who are aggressively, outwardly directed in their willingness to expand by the use of violence and oppression  not as last means, but as a core tactic  and are dominated by the need to seek out and, as matter not just of practice but of organizing principle, destroy all evidence of nonconformity.

In truth, the nature of Islam, with its arbitrary, merciless, and impersonal god, resembles, ironically, a kind of formalized atheism more than anything else. Like atheism it is intolerant, condescending, devoid of humility, and often militant (see atheism in the USSR or Red China or North Korea). Like atheism, Islam is a preening, conceited, self-superior, pseudointellectual ethical culture combined with a set of what are, in practice, unethical moral precepts  and like atheism, these memes cannot be unbundled. Much as there has never been or can be a truly free, democratic, and benevolent atheist nation, so too has there never been a truly benevolent Islamist one, and I suspect there never will be.

A dispassionate look at the facts reveals that Islam, especially (but not only) radical Islam, is more like atheism than it is, despite its pretensions, like a religion. Most Muslims refuse to deal with this truth. Conversely, atheists demonize Christianity in an attempt to deal with their own inability to honestly resolve any cognitive dissonance created by their own philosophical similarities to Islam. This is the ultimate reason for projection by atheists in their attempts to draw an unfounded confluence between Muslim extremists and Christianity  instead of seeing the log in their own eye. This is also why trying to draw a link between radical Islam and fundamentalist Christians is not the answer.

It seems that the nations highest levels of military leadership have succumbed to the false promise of diversity. How much of this is politically mandated? Admitting and graduating under- or unqualified midshipmen will eventually undermine the institution and the officer corps with potentially tragic consequences, but it resonates with the political elite because diversity has become an end unto itself.

Our nations civilian and military leadership evidently desire a more diverse military, one that better reflects demographic currents and those to come.

What they are overlooking is that military effectiveness is predicated on discipline, professionalism, and competence. Effective leadership is based on, among other qualities, trust, confidence, fairness, and competence. Everything else, including ethnicity and gender, is, or at least ought to be, irrelevant.

Winning wars, like winning in sports, requires the best talent, irrespective of race and gender. If our military is comprised of all white males or all Hispanic females because they merit the position, so be it. But to artificially construct a military based on a desired composition simply because it reflects the nations changing demographics or satisfies a political fetish is egregiously foolish.

#5
In his book Of Africa, Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, reveals "Africa as it truly is: a land of black victims at the mercy of a world of too many nations that have sought, at one point in their histories or another, to deprive it of its dignity". (note operative word "victim")

Soyinka completely ignores the fact Africa experienced a dozen millenniums before the arrival of the first white colonialists, and had made few advances into what one might call modern civilization. To acknowledge this fact would be combative to the narrative and destructive of the mantra of guilt and victimization.

Ironically the downside of American slavery wasn't slavery, it's beginning or it's very bloody end. The true downside is the Soyinkan view shared by many and taught everywhere, that someone else is to blame for African outcomes and that every effort should be made to promote universal guilt and financial restitution through direct grants, Affirmative Action, or by insisting...."the rich to pay a little more."

#8
In his book Of Africa, Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, reveals "Africa as it truly is: a land of black victims at the mercy of a world of too many nations that have sought, at one point in their histories or another, to deprive it of its dignity". (note operative word "victim")

But the trouble is that no one seems to learn the lesson no matter how often its taught. The 9/11 attackers came in the name of Islam to teach Americans what Islam is. The Benghazi attackers came in the in the name of Islam to teach Americans what Islam is. And the lesson is still unlearned.

The four-day hostage crisis in the Sahara reached a bloody conclusion on Saturday as the Algerian Army carried out a final assault on the gas field taken over by Islamist militants, killing most of the remaining kidnappers and raising the total of hostages killed to at least 23, Algerian officials said .

One Algerian who managed to escape told France 24 television late Friday night that the kidnappers said, Weve come in the name of Islam, to teach the Americans what Islam is. The haggard-looking man, interviewed at the airport in Algiers, said the kidnappers then immediately executed five hostages.

And that is exactly what Islam is. Its a bullet to the head of an unarmed man. A murder carried out for the purposes of display. An atrocity whose message is that Islam is a better religion than yours because its followers will kill you. That is what Islam is. That it is all it is. And over a thousand years of terror should have taught that lesson to the free peoples of the world already.

Islam is Daniel Pearl being beheaded. Islam is teenage girls being murdered in Afghanistan, in Jordan and in Toronto. Islam is non-Muslims being murdered because theyre non-Muslim and women being murdered because theyre women. Islam is over a thousand years of terror and tyranny wrapped into one brutal package.

This is Islam. Its lesson is the only one that it is capable of teaching, despite all the Koranic commentary and memorization. Its lesson is the same as that of the bullet or the poison or the Qassam rocket or the knife. Its lesson is death.

#1
Remember how much the Moslems absolutely HATE the Jews because it is an historical fact Moslems fought right alongside the Nazi SS...the Moslems even had their own SS Division ,,the ANSARI Division in the Nazi SS war machine. Moslems fought alongside the Nazi SS, joined and served.

#8
I need to take a break from the news. Every one of these stories evokes the Ah go phuech yourselves response in me. It doesn't seem to matter whether it is the islamists, the global warming Nazis or the statists.

A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.